283 



influence of external circumstances or internal growth, a 

 nonsuit, or a verdict of " not proven/^ as well on the evidence 

 as on the admissions in the cause. 



But testimony of all kinds appears to be readily set aside 

 by the fascinating, flattering power of the doctrine of evolution. 

 The proposition is repeated so loudly and continuously 

 that it has begun to be accepted as an axiom, not to be 

 questioned. It goes without argument. When a term becomes 

 popular, it invariably comes to be used in a loose sense. 

 Evolution, strictly, can only apply to action taking place in 

 the subject: but, in a looser sense, it is now used to express 

 the successive additions to the subject derived from any 

 source. It is used to include all effects produced by a guiding 

 principle or a possible accident. In order to account for the 

 origin of a species, it is popularly held that nothing more is 

 required than to show one very near to it, and thus resem- 

 blance is magnified into cause and effect. But surely per- 

 manent differences must indicate the action of corresponding 

 constitutional powers. Naturalists find barriers, which they treat 

 as boundary lines, only because they are so. They call the 

 assemblage of facts within areas so bounded a species, and 

 claim for it an independent origin, and call the mode in 

 which this was brought about creation, for want of any 

 adequate secondary cause. The common sense and common 

 speech of mankind are on their side. Either cephalopods 

 must have been derived from some simpler form, by minute 

 stages of difference, or, they must have been originally created 

 as we now find them ; and if the latter supposition, which 

 we have seen is an hypothesis surrounded with difficulties 

 hitherto unsurmounted, requires the multiplication of miracles, 

 we are not alarmed at this conclusion. Up to the present day the 

 domain of natural history has been searched in vain for any 

 second cause adequate to produce the permanent difference 

 between races. Evolution may be a plausible guess, it may be 

 a working hypothesis, but I do not think it bears examination; 

 and there are those who properly say. Why should we resort 

 to guess-work when another department of knowledge gives 

 us the plain, simple truth, — God made "^ everything after its 

 kind^'? 



Mr. Bouverie Pusey, recently here, successfully established 

 the proposition that variation in the animal kingdom is 

 limited and exceptional. The law which has ruled the 

 existing differences must be a manifestation of creating, and 

 not merely of unfolding. The direction of the will-force was 

 evidently in such lines as to make the successive subjects as 

 nearly alike as possible compatible with ordered essential 



